Thoughts from Abroad [and a bloke]

Julia Kristeva    1941

The term ABJECT has been explored in post-structuralism as what disturbs conventional identity and cultural concepts.

Kristeva describes subjective horror (abjection) as the feeling when an individual experiences what Kristeva terms one's "corporeal reality“.  Or is confronted by both mentally and or as a body, the breakdown in the distinction between what is Self and what is Other

The concept of abjection is the process by which, one separates one's sense of self from what immediately threatens one's sense of life.

Abjection prevents the absolute realization of existence, completing the course of biological, social, physical, and spiritual cycles. The best representation of this concept can be imagined as one's reaction to gazing at a human cadaver, or corpse, as a direct reminder of the inevitability of death.

The abject is, as such, the process that separates from one's environment what "is not me."

Kristeva's concept of abjection explains popular cultural narratives of horror, and discriminatory behaviour manifesting in Misogyny, Homophobia and Genocide……The Other

Martin Heidegger  1889 -1976

•Heidegger explores the fundamental questions of Time, Death and the underlying Angst of being human.

•Philosophy of Being…..what is Is?

•Being is not a “thing”  it is not available to the senses.

•Ontology thinking about Being

•Dasein…..human life, ways of being In the world, being with others, states of mind

 Eva Hesse  1936 - 1970

•Eva Hesse is associated with the Post Minimal Art Movement. Hesse is one of the first artists who moved from Minimalism to Post minimalism

•Arthur Danto distinguishes it from minimalism by its "mirth and jokiness" and "unmistakable whiff of eroticism", its "non-mechanical repetition".

•Many feminist art historians have noted her work successfully illuminates women’s issues while refraining from any obvious political agenda.

•She reveals, in a letter to Ethelyn Honig (1965), that a woman is

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• "at disadvantage from the beginning… She lacks conviction that she has the ‘right’ to achievement. She also lacks the belief that her achievements are worthy”.[She continues to explain that, “a fantastic strength is necessary and courage. I dwell on this all the time. My determination and will is strong but I am lacking so in self-esteem that I never seem to overcome”.[She denied her work was strictly feminist, defending it as feminine but without feminist statements in mind.